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Thursday, 28 August 2014

Harmful Apps Can Hack Gmail Apps As Proved By US Researchers

According to some US researchers’ study, it is possible to hack into the accounts of Gmail, which can be almost 92% successful. It is mainly done by utilizing a weak point in the memory Smartphones. The researchers themselves were able to have access to a range of apps, which are in Gmail, by masking harmful software as a different downloaded app.Gmail was one of the simplest to access from the trendy apps as it was tested.

What is Phishing?

Phishing actually is not the single technique used by the researchers to get the user’s information. The Chase Bank app lets the users to pay through checks by getting the image of the check by means of the phone camera. The hackers can do another attack, with the help of the advantage of this characteristic. A particular phone can put down a check by trapping a picture of it. The infected app captured the picture. This can help hackers to have entry to bank account info including the signature of the user.

Impact of the hacking through apps

The hacking was experimented on an Android mobile, but as per the researchers, it might work on any other operating system like Windows as well as the iOS system. The researchers utilized a harmful application to check the activity on an Android Smartphone. The impact starts while the user downloads such a malicious app. This app does not work until the user begins using one of the intended apps of Gmail or even the Chase Bank. By using data in the common memory, the harmful application traces out what the mobile user is doing on another app. The malware after that launches a false login window to get back the data provided by the user into the intended application. This is chiefly called a phishing attack, which the hackers mostly use to get sensitive economic data.

It has been generally assumed by the users and also the developers that these apps can never interfere with one other simply. Researchers proved that this statement is not right, and one app, in fact, considerably is able to affect another and this causes some harmful effects for the user. The hackers can get access by making a user to fix a seemingly risk-free app for example phone wallpaper. They expose a lately revealed public side channel, which does not need privileges. This trait allows methods to share all the data capably and is rather common, because all of the downloaded apps of the mobile interact with single operating system.

Thus, all the users must be always careful about these hackings. They should download apps from only the reliable sources. Generally, in most cases, popular apps are the source of hacking. In order to avoid these, it is better to check your Smartphone or the tablet on the regular basis. You have to be certain that apps that are the genuine one are the just ones that you installed. If any unnecessary app or the seemingly harmful apps are downloaded, uninstall it immediately.